Kickstarter

There’s a DIN Rail mountable enclosure for the Raspberry Pi. It’s not just a plastic case, but also contains a expansion slot, RS485 and RS232 transceiver, small prototyping area, a bunch of opto-isolated GPIOs and a 5v 2A power supply, which is powered from mains. Nice unit if you’re getting serious about home automation.

This next one is a small project aimed at STEM education that comes in kit form. It contains a small DC water pump, power supply, breadboard and a bunch of other things for kids to learn how to annoy their parents even further. Note; this kit doesn’t contain the Raspberry Pi.

If you’ve ever been to any conferences, especially those that involve electronic Makers, you’ll have noticed that everyone is upping the ante with creative name badges. Well, you can get this one which contains a Freescale KW01 MCU running at 48MHz with ChiBIOS real-time O/S installed, 12bit DAC, 320×240 TFT touch display, 4G SD, buttons, LEDs and a 815MHz RF chip so you can play a multi-player game with opponents.

There’s also this one, which is based on the Rigado BMD-300 SoC, which is based on the nRF52832 Bluetooth chip, nRF52 Cortex M4F, 128×128 LCD, and a few sensors. Well, seems the old days of scribbling your name on a sticky note are gone.

Continuing the gaming theme; you would have seen this one a while back. They’ve taken the classic game of Pong and made it into a coffee table, where the bat and ball are moved around by magnets and simulates the original game pretty well, but before you get too excited, check the price tag.

Another blast from the past. This small board provides a MIDI interface that emulates the sounds of the original Nintendo video game console. This one is the second iteration of a successful Kickstarter last year.

A small change of pace with the Snapmaker, which is an all metal 3D printer that you can also attach laser engraving and CNC cutting heads. It’s a modular design to cut down on shipping costs and comes with touchscreen control and their own Snap3D printing software. It’s capable of 50 micron resolution on a 125mm cubed heated bed that they claim levels automatically.

For 119 euros you can pick up the Niryo One, which is a 6 axis robotic arm that talks over Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth or USB to Android or iOS phones and even has an inbuilt web app. Runs off 12v 7A DC supply and contains a Pi3 and Arduino Mega. It claims 500 micron repeatability, so can’t be used for things like pick and place, but has a number of different heads such as grippers, electromagnet, vacuum pump, pen holder and DC motor.

I’m back is back with a bolt on board that will convert your old analog camera into a digital one using a PI, Arduino, Omega2 or whatever you have lying around. If you have an old camera and interested in photography this looks pretty good. The other thing that’s good is the big improvement over his last campaign video, which was pretty horrible. Good to see he’s back again.

Joto looks like a fun product, but I think it’s a little too pricey. For 165 British pounds you get an internet connected whiteboard that you can send messages to. Great idea, but too expensive for me. Looks like I’ll have to publish a video on how to do it yourself much cheaper.

IndieGoGo

Nothing interesting on IndieGoGo or CrowdSupply this week,

Others

, but here’s a bunch of new SBCs on the market and a couple that will be launched soon.

Aaeon will soon be releasing the Rico-3288 SBC, which runs the Rockchip RK3288 quad core ARM Cortex-A17 at 1.6GHz, 16G eMMC, 2G DDR3 RAM, SD slot, GbE, Mini-PCIe and dual LCD and HDMI. Looks like an interesting board, but I’m betting the price tag will be around the $150 US mark.

Hot on the heels of the Up2, there will be a smaller footprint board called the Up Core. For the 66mm by 56mm size they are packing in a quad core Intel x5-Z8350 at 1.6GHz, 4G DDR3, 64G eMMC, HDMI, eDP, 2 MIPI-CSI, WiFi, Bluetooth, RTC, USB2.0 and USB3.0 all running off an expanded 4A 5v DC supply. This one will be a screamer and I’m looking forward to reviewing it.

Then FriendlyElec or FriendlyARM have a new update on the NanoPi Neo, called the NanoPi Neo 2. Contains all the same bits as the original Neo with Allwinner H5, 512M DDR3 RAM, USB 2.0 and SD slot but now has GbE. It’s still a headless SBC, but bang for the buck is pretty good. I’ll be reviewing this one soon so stay tuned.

The humble Orange Pi has now joined up forces with Canonical to build an Orange Pi App store based on Ubuntu Core to allow people to download apps called snaps. This is a good move for Orange Pi, and opens up a lot more options for IoT development.

Speaking of Orange Pi, we now have a new board called, inventively, the Orange Pi Zero Plus 2. This one abandons the H2+ in favor of the H3 and also adds in HDMI and a newer WiFi chip based on the Ampack AP6212.

SlushEngine Model D is a step up from the Model X, but can control 7 steppers, three of them at 20A and four at 5A running off 9 to 35 volts. That’s a fair amount of kick and would be suitable for CNC machines.

This is another blast from the past. The RC2014 is a Z80 based computer. If you have used the Z80 at all you’ll know about its limited memory space. This is a module that’ll page in additional memory on demand for your RC2014, thereby increasing the effective memory space.

Sometimes you just need a device to sit outside and run forever. This board is based on the RTL8710, but also has solar power battery charging for a LiPo. It also contains a Bosch BME280 sensor with temperature, humidity and pressure.

This is another board with solar power battery charging, but is designed for the Pi Zero. It also provides additional GPIOs, USB port, ethernet socket and RTC. This board is the outcome of a successful Kickstarter in 2015.

The BeagleBone Blue is the same as a the BeagleBone Wireless, except is targeted towards robotics. Contains the Octavo OSD3358 SiP, 4G eMMC, SD slot, USB, 10DOF IMU, WL1835MOD based WiFi, 2 cell LiPo battery management and can control 8 servos and 4 DC motors up to 4A. You can also get it from Mouser if it’s out of stock at Seeed.

This first Weeky Roundup of the year and we're already seeing lots of new goodies from SBCs, to WiFi modules, but really a tonne of new SBCs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #62: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup, which hasn't really been weekly for the past month, we're seeing a fair amount of retro kit, FPGAs and SBCs. Basically a whole lot of stuff that is really cool that you didn't know you needed. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #61: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup is actually a little short, but we have FPGAs, SBCs and other cool things I've found in my travels on the interwebs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #60: New Maker Products // News→

An SBC that's not really an SBC. Based on the NationalChip GX6605S, it runs a tiny Linux with a very small component count, but is it too cool to be usable? Continue reading The C-Sky SBC: Pi in the Sky? // Review→

In this review I take a look at one of the newer members of the Khadas family; The Khadas Edge and Khadas Captain. This board has some pretty interesting power management but, unfortunately, I saw the return of the magic smoke genie. Continue reading The Khadas Edge: A new captain

The LattePanda Alpha SBC is a bit of a beast not only in horse power, but in price. In this video I look at benchmarks on Windows, Linux and OSX and give my perspective on why LattePanda made a big mistake. Continue reading LattePanda Alpha: The big mistake? // Review→

This quick project shows you how to build an MQTT controlled RGB LED matrix panel in under 30 minutes, but I reckon it should take you a lot less. Continue reading Build an MQTT based RGB LED panel! // Project→

Do you want to be able to send an SMS over 20kms without using a mobile phone network? Here's one small project you can knock up in less than a day allowing you to send an SMS over LoRa. Continue reading SMS over LoRa: Long distance SMS without 4G //

If you're a fan of GoLang then your options are limited in the embedded world. So, here's a couple of options for you with a working bare metal example for an STM32 MCU written entirely in Go. Continue reading Running GoLang on an STM32 MCU. A quick tutorial.→

This is the second part of my video on building a simple PCB using EasyEDA. This time we'll be taking a look at how to use a solder stencil, placing SMD components, soldering using kitchen equipment and how to fix up your mistakes. Continue reading Make a PCB from scratch

A follow-up to my video tutorial: "Program an Atmel SAM without an IDE". I've created a Docker container on GitHub with a complete ASF build chain. Ready to go. Go for it! Continue reading Atmel Software Framework and build chain in a Docker container→

A bit of a different mailbag this week. Containing a lot of bits and pieces for upcoming projects and other odds and ends. Continue reading MickMake Mail #30: Gakken, JLCPCB, wicking and skulls // News→